Erik ten Hag | 2022/23 & 2023/24

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Iker Quesadillas said:
To me the point of having a "proper football structure" is that you're not dependent on individuals.

But from posts I read here, some people want a "proper football structure" just so that it can support a long-term manager.
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You mean the structure should be supporting the club and the manager has to fit into that structure, not the other way round.
 
For £8m a year (or whatever we pay him) I'd expect the manager to have an excellent grasp on a player's value.

He wanted control over transfers and it's absolutely damning that he picked the players he has for the money spent. He should be sacked for that obvious lack of ability alone.

- Rangnick had it right about this squad and it's lack of physicality but he chose not to listen.
- Ten Hag himself was quoted as saying Guardiola underestimated the power and speed of the PL when he first arrived.

It's laughable that he's spent £400m on these players like he'd never watched a PL game in his life.
 
DomesticTadpole said:
You mean the structure should be supporting the club and the manager has to fit into that structure, not the other way round.
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Everyone who is not a United fan knows that is the job of the football structure. The club and the manager is not a 50-50 relationship. The manager is a mid-manager (punt intended) who is there to coach players, select the team and make the tactics. The football structure sacks him when he fails to do either of those in a competent level. It is not there to fuel his ego and back him by signing the players he wants, and getting rid of those he doesn’t want.
 
No strategy in the final third is why it looks like ETH has no style of play and we are struggling to score goals. By strategy in the final third I mean this....
now that we have the ball and have progressed it into the final third, how are we as a team getting that ball into the opposition net. What is our consistent overarching theme or idea to do do this. Let me explain a bit.

Under Ferguson, our strategy to score goals was mainly through wing play...our midfields job was to get the job to the wingers in a way that they are 1v1 with the fb..winger had to beat the fb and put in a cross...strikers knew this and moved in the box for the cross, cutback or GK spillage. This is why whenever we were failing to unlock a low block team, we just substituted on different wingers and added even more strikers in the box. It was common to see Nani for Giggs, saha thrown on to add to tevez and rooney etc. It was simple and effective football...and funnily enough, Liverpool use the same strategy now when they are breaking a low block. They cross a lot in hope of nunez or diaz or salah scoring from the cross.

Peps mancity team is all about creating overloads. Its not so much about creating a 1v1 for the wingers but 2v1. They recycle and switch play very quickly through intricate passing inorder to create overloads either on the wing or through the middle. This strategy requires players with great technique and great decision making but is beautiful to see in person. It is also the most expensive style to archieve as you will need to pay good money for these intricate ball players. This is why mancity can win the league without any striker or playing with some low scoring striker like gabriel jesus.

Arteta tries to mix the 2 styles with saka and martinelli expected to beat the fb 1v1 but also having overlapping fb to create overloads. However, He leans more towards pep than the klopp style ie. 7/10 times they try the intricate thing first.

ETH has no strategy when in the final third. The overriding theme I see is that we try to recycle possession in the final third by moving the ball from side to side in the hope that we find space on the other side or that bruno creates an opportunity by spamming through balls. This is why alot of our attacks just break down without a shot at goal.

Our wingers are NEVER tasked with going to beat their fbs when 1v1...and our fbs do not consistently overlap. In one move the winger tries to beat the fb fails and wins a corner or losses it...in the next he fears to do so and is seen recycling possession. Same thing with our fbs, one moment they overlap, the next moment they invert...there is no consistency.

This is why all our strikers have struggled to score. There is no consistent strategy when we attack so they do not know which runs to make when the ball is in certain areas. They dont even know whether a cross is coming or the winger is going to try a direct shot. It looks so disjointed and this is why fans are complaining that we dont have a style of play.

The only player who risks consistently is bruno by spamming through balls. Bruno risking is not the real problem...its the areas he risks in. Losing the ball in the midfield is a very huge problem because teams can transition directly to our goal in seconds.

This is also why ETH subs are just as inconsistent and dont make sense. He never changes the formation but makes these rudimentary like for like substitutes. When we trailled under Ferguson he would sacrifice a defender... switch to back 3 and throw more bodies in the box. ETH removes mainoo for mctominay...then Anthony for Amad..and he never removes bruno because he has built the entire creativity of the team through this one player and not through a team strategy in the final third.

So there you have it... us having no strategy in the final third is why we struggle from game to game and why we look clueless against low blocks. ETH failing to actually notice this and fix it is why his substitutes and post match comments sound clueless and it is probably why he will get fired in the long term
 
Jev said:
No, they only said he didn’t sanction the outlay.
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There was a line about him being told the budget was a lot lower than what it actually was by the end of the window.
 
VP89 said:
There was a line about him being told the budget was a lot lower than what it actually was by the end of the window.
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The budget was a lot lower before we went into panic station and gave him everything he pointed at.
 
VP89 said:
There was a line about him being told the budget was a lot lower than what it actually was by the end of the window.
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That was the case. Then we panicked and used debt to increase the budget.
 
Iker Quesadillas said:
To me the point of having a "proper football structure" is that you're not dependent on individuals.

But from posts I read here, some people want a "proper football structure" just so that it can support a long-term manager.
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Wtf are you on about? The idea of a proper footballing structure is so we DON'T have to treat managers as dieties.
 
Jev said:
The budget was a lot lower before we went into panic station and gave him everything he pointed at.
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So the budget was wrong. Also I don't agree with that last sentence, the positions the club was set to target was established and briefed for a while.
 
VP89 said:
So the budget was wrong. Also I don't agree with that last sentence, the positions the club was set to target was established and briefed for a while.
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The budget was not wrong. The budget was changed. How is that so complicated?

As for the latter, do you genuinely believe the club would have signed Antony without ETH here?
 
VP89 said:
Don't we use debt for our signings anyway?
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Yes, but you can get more debt. I think we are 300m in debt for player transfers alone, which is one of the biggest in football. We are quickly reaching Barca’s level of mismanagement in this aspect.

Of course, signing bad players for insane amounts has long-term consequences even in debt, cause it gets harder to get more debt to sign their replacements. At some stage, it becomes too much debt.
 
Red_toad said:
I'd disagree, his Ajax teams were very very well drilled.
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Bar 1 incredible run in the UCL where Tadic played an absolute blinder in the Bernabeu(and they still choked vs Spurs later on), his UCL run later on was full of disappointing results.

It's much easier to coach a team where you are by far the best side in the country with the most homegrown talent available for plucking.

He's been massively exposed this season. The Eredvisie is his level.
 
Jev said:
The budget was a lot lower before we went into panic station and gave him everything he pointed at.
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This whole budget thing sounds like a DOF problem though than EtH to be fair.

I mean, isn't that what Murtough is meant to be doing? Or am I miss understanding the process? I'd have thought he would know the budget, EtH knows the players he wants (or at least a few choices in positions he wants) and off Murtough goes?

Like this whole Antony thing. EtH might want him, but surely its Murtough who decided to blow £80M on him? Or for all we know Mount wasn't first choice and it was Murtough who decided he was the better option financially...
 
C'est Moi Cantona said:
He'll be fine for the Wigan and Spurs matches, the real test will now February when we have alot of games, and he should have Casemiro, Martinez, Maguire, and Mount back, plus Ineos will hopefully be in full control by then.

It's quite possible we could be real run together during that month, and suddenly things will look a lot different for him, and personally I really hope it does play out like that.
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Amazing that people still harbor hope he will come good.

It's over. It's only a matter of time before he gets sacked.
 
Eddy_JukeZ said:
Bar 1 incredible run in the UCL where Tadic played an absolute blinder in the Bernabeu(and they still choked vs Spurs later on), his UCL run later on was full of disappointing results.

It's much easier to coach a team where you are by far the best side in the country with the most homegrown talent available for plucking.

He's been massively exposed this season. The Eredvisie is his level.
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Joke has 0 knowledge, the AJAX that season was the best team in the world of football full stop. They had an amazing run and amazing players.
 
astracrazy said:
This whole budget thing sounds like a DOF problem though than EtH to be fair.

I mean, isn't that what Murtough is meant to be doing? Or am I miss understanding the process? I'd have thought he would know the budget, EtH knows the players he wants (or at least a few choices in positions he wants) and off Murtough goes?

Like this whole Antony thing. EtH might want him, but surely its Murtough who decided to blow £80M on him? Or for all we know Mount wasn't first choice and surely it was Murtough who decided he was the better option financially...
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Reputable reports had that as ETH's 1st choice.

There's a report on here that ETH pressured the board after our opening 2 losses last season which caused them to cave and overpay for Antony.

Honestly, the very fact that our own manager coached Antony for years at Ajax and then wanted him at United should have been the 1st sign he's completely clueless for PL level football.
 
The fact that he can look at Antony and Amrabat, two of the worst players I’ve ever seen put on a Utd shirt, and think they have a place at Manchester United is a sackable offence.

The players we have are probably the worst assembled Utd squad I’ve seen since I started supporting (1989). Not a quality player amongst them and I include Bruno and Rashford in that. The only players I enjoy watching in this team are the ones that have potential - Hojland, Amad, Garnacho and Mainoo.
 
Ricardo de la Vega said:
How do you know it's not the problem? How many coaches do you appoint and sack over ten, fifteen, twenty years before you say oh maybe there's a structural reason we are terrible?
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Ten Hag is already working under a different structure than previous managers though. There’s a poster in this very same thread that wanted to die on this hill. So, what exactly is the “structure” that people want for Ten Hag to succeed/think that will suddenly make-up for his shortcomings?

When is Ten Hag supposed to be evaluated? He has the structural change(s) that others didn't, he has been backed with funds others weren't.

by the way, I’ll keep referring people to this post whenever they insinuated we’ve sacked too many managers:

JPRouve said:
I mean we have fans who somehow believe that 6 managers in 10 years is a lot or too much.

People should remember that during the same period of time Bayern had 8 different managers(including interims), Real Madrid had 6 different and 7 in total, Juventus had 4 different and 5 in total. Both Milan team have had 10 different managers. Napoli have had 7 different managers. The point being that United are arguably the club that underachieved the most and one of the key issue is the club reluctance to change things quickly
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JuriM said:
Joke has 0 knowledge, the AJAX that season was the best team in the world of football full stop. They had an amazing run and amazing players.
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Well, they weren't the best team in the world, but they did have a lot of talented invidiuals.

They had a year where everything came together for them. Afterwards, ETH's Ajax were rather disappointing in Europe.

We've honestly been conned.
 
Somewhere in holland, Louis Van Gaal is sitting on his comfortable arm chair, sipping a warm glass of coco, looking at ten hags picture and murmuring "I told you so".
 
Bwuk said:
I just don’t understand our midfield set up. The gaps are huge, and none of our CDMs have the legs to cover the space.

Its mind boggling we’ve not went back to a 4231 yet.
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We play a single pivot in DM, despite most of the big European clubs playing 2 DM’s in that role, and we go man to man in the midfield. Remember how well that worked for Bielsa at Leeds? Of course Ten Hag denies any of this is happening, and then you see it happen during the game…
 
Our structures are absolutely terrible and need changing. However, we've also appointed really poor managers post-Fergie and allowed them to buy overpriced dross.
 
Ayoba said:
Somewhere in holland, Louis Van Gaal is sitting on his comfortable arm chair, sipping a warm glass of coco, looking at ten hags picture and murmuring "I told you so".
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Why should he? The board/club didn't let Ten Hag down at all.

He's been heavily backed and has been given more leeway than he deserves by a good amount.

If the club had any standards whatsoever, he'd have been sacked 3 times by now.
 
There is one huge factor when it comes to playing teams like Forest. Every time we moved the ball near their penalty area, they defended with 9 people behind the ball.
It doesn't really matter what patterns of play you use, what drills you do or how well coached your team is in these situations. These things help as far as bringing the ball in danger area. After that - individual class comes into play.
When there is no space to attack and no obvious pass, it comes to the ability of players to improvise, beat a man, make a trick shot etc.
And this applies to every team ever.

Sure, in an open game the better coached team will win most of the times. But when one team is defending tightly with many bodies, it will always be down to players individual class.

This season in every game we played against defensive teams, we bring the ball to the penalty area again and again and we simply cannot find a solution. This is mostly on the players. In these situations you'll expect your wingers to beat a man, so they can get inside the box. And our wingers are hopeless. Garnacho has the pace to beat a defender when he's on the run. When he has to beat the defender face to face, he fails 95% of the time. Rashford, Antony, Pellistri... All hopeless in 1vs1 situations. Actually Sancho is the one winger who has shown some kind of ability to beat a man on the spot, but he turned out to be a massive, lazy twat.

Usually when the wingers can't get inside, the ball gets passed back to Bruno, who attempts some insanely stupid cross to nobody.

Another big problem - either the players don't expect our wingers to beat the defence and get inside the box, or they are not coached to attack the box. Because when rarely we manage to get a fullback or winger inside, we only have 1 attacker vs 3-4 defenders to attack the ball. And when we attempt to cut back the ball, Bruno and the other midfielders are too far behind and the pass gets intercepted. Also, Hojlund is not quick enough to react to fast crosses. He seems to be 1-2 steps behind and on a few occasions it looks like if he had started his run earlier, he would have scored.

So it's both down to coaching and players class, but against tight defences the latter is what makes a difference. It will always be like this.
 
The regime hasn’t helped any manager - he should have gotten a proper striker in the Summer but that’s not his fault. However, he was out of his depth the moment he thought Anthony was good enough for United just because he was decent in the Dutch league.
 
astracrazy said:
This whole budget thing sounds like a DOF problem though than EtH to be fair.

I mean, isn't that what Murtough is meant to be doing? Or am I miss understanding the process? I'd have thought he would know the budget, EtH knows the players he wants (or at least a few choices in positions he wants) and off Murtough goes?

Like this whole Antony thing. EtH might want him, but surely its Murtough who decided to blow £80M on him? Or for all we know Mount wasn't first choice and surely it was Murtough who decided he was the better option financially...
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Sure, I think what’s happening here is that an ETH supporter is trying to suggest he was briefed the ‘wrong’ budget, and therefore not given the proper tools to work with. Which is bizarre. What happened was we gave him the budget we felt we could afford, and then we gave him even more later.

The responsibility for our disastrous transfers is dual. The club should never have blindly backed ETH like that, and ETH shouldn’t have insisted on signing ageing, raw, ill-suited, mediocre or downright terrible players that he knew would cost a huge chunk of our budget.
 
Ayoba said:
Somewhere in holland, Louis Van Gaal is sitting on his comfortable arm chair, sipping a warm glass of coco, looking at ten hags picture and murmuring "I told you so".
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He has been saying that for every manager we have hired and sacked since I bet.
 
The 'structure' excuse to absolve Ten Hag is quite something.

A much better structure isn't to improve his incompetent coaching that we've seen this season. I truly think some of you don't realize how bad we've been. There is nothing redeemable about our season and we will get worse unless our performances massively improve. Our xPTs has us sitting 13th. We will start slipping down the table and there's a good chance we don't finish in the top half. It's abject management from him all season.
 
I've defended him to some extent because of the injuries this season. Even though I thought his performance last season was a bit overrated.

But he's banging out the injuries as a reason for everything now.

There's a line. Yes we can't expect to be top 4 with the injuries. That's understandable.

But the lack of goals, come on. That's not just injuries.
 
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